Last November, I saw Mariachi El Bronx at La Cita. The downtown bar was packed and the band, the long-running mariachi offshoot of The Bronx, played with such incredible energy while squeezed onto La Cita’s tiny stage. The gig was the first of a handful of dates they had schedule in the lead-up to their new album, IV, which is out today. I had the chance to interview Matt Caughthran of Mariachi El Bronx for Music Connection, which is now available in the print issue and online. 

Read: MARIACHI EL BRONX’S NEW ALBUM AND THE INFLUENCE OF LOS ANGELES

The new album is fantastic, really, the best I’ve heard from Mariachi El Bronx. They’re also playing live and signing records at Amoeba next Tuesday. Try to check it out if you can. For info on that, plus a few of my recommendations for going out in Los Angeles this weekend, head over to Beatique. There’s lots happening, including Cold Cave at The Bellwether, Lead Into Gold at 2220 Arts + Archives, Nuovo Testamento at The Roxy and more. 

Interview

Kiss Big, the latest album from Irish singer Ailbhe Reddy opens with an ending. “I see you,” she sings on “Align” as a melancholy synth percolates underneath her description of the reflection in a train window. You can imagine the goodbye play out as if it were filmed in black-and-white. 

Reddy began writing Kiss Big several years ago, when the Dublin-raised artist moved to London and was going through a breakup. “There were bits and pieces that I wrote over the years,” she says on a recent video call. The components gradually came together in the form of an album that digs into the aftermath of a relationship and all the conflicting emotions that come with it. Lyrically, Reddy glides back and forth through time as she juxtaposes flashback’s with revelations that sound more recent than they are. Making an album takes time. 

Read: Ailbhe Reddy on Collaboration and Ireland’s Music Scene

Album Reviews 

Charli XCX - Wuthering Heights

Brat is a good example of how a viral marketing campaign can make me loathe something. Maybe the album, which I thought was meh, would have grown on me if it hadn’t been overshadowed by “Brat summer.” That said, I was curious to  hear Charli xcx’s soundtrack for Wuthering Heights just to see maybe I would react differently to her music without the trying-to-hard marketing campaign surrounding it. After all, I didn’t dislike her music pre-Brat. Overall, Wuthering Heights, the album, is solid. “House,” Charli xcx’s collaboration with John Cale is, by far, the strongest track on the album. It sounds gothic in the literary sense. In fact, the gothic haunted house vibe continues throughout the album. Even the most conventional pop songs, like “Eyes of the World,” are filled with noisy elements that bring to mind shrieking ghosts and wind howling through the moors. Now, I’ve yet to see Emerald Fennell’s adaptation of Wuthering Heights, and the last time I read Emily Brontë’s novel was in high school, but it sounds like Charli xcx is tapping into the themes and plot points for the lyrics and it works. Aside from “House,” club-friendly “Dying for You” and “My Reminder” are standouts on the album.

Felsmann + Tiley - Protomensch

If you’re one of the millions of people who have streamed the spacey, kind of disturbing reinterpretation of the M83 song “Solitude,” then you know who Felsmann + Tiley is. The German duo, who have also gave us the haunted reinterpretation of The Irrepressible’s song “The Most Beautiful Boy,” just dropped a new album, Protomensch, that expands on the vibe of those productions. Opening with the ambient synthwave of “Memory” and quickly moving into the unsettling “Opioid,” which features U.K. band Pet Deaths, Felsmann + Tiley score music for dreams, and nightmares, that look like they were directed by Nicolas Winding Refn and Panos Cosmatos. On songs like “Reset” and “Warum,” they essentially play the build-up a trance track without ever letting it erupt into festival banger. With “Always You,” featuring Woodes, and “God Is Lonelier,” featuring Laius, they offer an incredibly somber twist on synthpop. It’s all fantastic stuff, particularly for fans of bands like M83, Chromatics and Tangerine Dream in their film score era. 

Read: Mariachi El Bronx, Charli xcx and More New Music

That’s it for this week. I’m not DJing anywhere this weekend, but tune into this month’s Beatique set over on Mixcloud. See you on the dance floor soon!

Liz O.